Ecological Balance of Agri-Food Supply Chains—The Case of the Industrial Tomato

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to review the paper Ecological balance of agri-food supply chains. The case of the industrial tomato.  The paper deals with a very interesting problem. However, the paper has a lot of drawbacks.

·        The abstract is not well written. The most important results must be emphasized.

·        It is necessary to understand the purpose and aim of the paper as well as its "position" in relation to previous research (also gap analysis).

·        The last paragraph in the introduction section is the structure of the paper (several sentences for each section). This is missing.

·        Methodology (Section 3) is very trivial and not clear.

·        Section 2.5. does not explain Data sources.

·        Section 3 is very trivial.

·        There are two sections 4 and both are not on a satisfactory level.

·        This paper is not written at a scientific level. There are many limitations in terms of problem formulation, applied approaches, methodology, results, etc.

·        The paper has no scientific or practical contributions.

·        The references are double-numbered. The special problem is disorderly formatted and numbered (lined 380-383).

 

The paper does not correspond to high standards of Sustainabilty. 

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript ID sustainability-2290484, Titled ‘Ecological balance of agri-food supply chains. The case of the industrial. The research provides the theoretical approach adopted in the study refers to the paradigm of ecological economics by recalling the concept of strong sustainability through the conservation of natural capital and its non-replacement with economic capital. Adopting this approach, a sustainability assessment of the industrial tomato supply chain was carried out.

My detailed comments are as follows.

1.     Abstract is not clear change it for clear innovation and concise results.

2.     The problem definition and innovations presented in the introduction must be greater clarity and specificity. Rewrite the study’s contribution in sequence.

3.     Cite more recent literature. Recent studies can be found at: 

 

https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2014

https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010836

 

4.     Revise the conclusion to describe your study's problem, methods, and innovative findings. Add limitations of the study.

5.     Revise for typo mistakes.

6.     Check the citation style and references according to the journal’s requirement

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

L29: This statement “super food” is not appropriate, since tomato is just a relatively common vegetable, and its importance to humans is similar to or even less than that of some another vegetable species, i.e. onions or potatoes.

L32: California is just a state of US and doesn’t to be a completely independent country yet,

L39: “Despite” is not appropriate.

L46-47: the studies of ... have

Methodology: Methods must be detailed enough for replication. More details about how to obtain these important indexes need to be given in the manuscript.

Results: It is difficult to distinguish which data are from references (and the source is also not given by the authors) and which are calculated in the study.

Discussion: One or two cases are difficult to draw a convincing conclusion.

Conclusions: Conclusions should to be more concise and focused.

L257-287: Inconsistent text format.

L275: It is generally inappropriate to cite references in the conclusion part.

References: Inconsistent format for initial case of words. Redundant serial number.

L299, 309, 312, 319, 341, 348, 366, 369, 375, 377: Missing page number.

L341, 344, 384: Wrong.

L354, 375, 378, 380: Inconsistent format for published years.

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This study has interesting topic and the results might have guiding significance in tomato production and environmental sustainability. However, the methodology section should be improved to make the results strong and impressive. The manuscript requires extensive review and minor revision as commented below:

The abstract should be improved. Lines 12-20 is the description of methods employed by this study. some impressive results should be listed also.

Line 12: ‘the’ change into ‘this’

Line 15: ‘crop’ change into ‘production’

Line 17: ’increase’ change into ‘increasing’

Line 40: delete ‘production’

Lines 86-88: more details (equations or references) are needed for calculations of EB and EF.

Line 88: ‘single evaluations’ change into ‘single evaluation’.

 Line 129: please add proper descriptions for each symbol in this figure.

2.5 Data sources: I think more details are needed in this session, e.g. the farm location, size of planting area, general summaries of irrigation, fertilizer, pest control, etc. As the author mentioned the assessments including impact of farming activities in 2.1, please list what they are and give more detailed data or description of the farms related to this study. In addition, are all of the collected data in one year? Which year? Please also report general meteorological parameters of this study area, while your results might provide a scientific reference for the areas having similar weather.

Line 144: delete ‘were selected as a case study’

Lines 142-144: move this description to 2.5 Data Sources session.

Line 148: ‘offers’ change into ‘offered’, please check throughout the manuscript and use past tense to report the previous studies.

Line 158: delete ‘the first part of’

Line 164: delete ‘shown in the part of the table’

Line 165: ‘reports’ change into ‘showed’

In Table 1, what exactly does horticultural crops refer to? Since tomato is also one of the horticultural crops.

Line 213: ‘single crops’?

Line 226: does soil management technique mean crops rotation?

Line 230: ‘considering’ change into ‘with comparison to’

Line 238: just a curious question, it is a tough objective to make the system biocapacity, but I was wondering if the commercial income of tomato productions could be considered when assessing the industrial phase?

Line 274: willing to know more details of data summary and calculation process.

Line 267-283: these sentences seemed more proper in discussion section.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

The article deals with important research issues on Ecological balance of agri-food supply chains. The case of the industrial tomato. However, I suggest some comments to improve the structure of the manuscript. 

Abstract:

In the Abstract section it isn’t possible to identify main recommendations for policy makers.

 

1. Introduction

Line 27: How?

Line 30-31: Please, report the two categories

Line 57: The study assesses the environmental sustainability of agri-food chains considering the industrial tomato as investigated product, I suggest to report the Research Questions (RQs) as following:

RQ1:…..

RQ2:….

RQ3:….

 

2. Theoretical framework

I suggest to add this new section

 

2. 3. Data and methods

I suggest the following structure

3.1 Study area

Please, insert here from lines 142 to 151

3.2 Data sources

Please, describe how were extracted the data from the farms holding files

3.3 Ecological balance

Lines 83-90: Describe in detail the theoretical approach and the ecological balance obtained for the agricultural, transport, industrial and supply chain phases.

 

3. 4. Results

4.1 Agricultural phase

4.2 Transport phase

4.3 Industrial phase

4.4 Supply chain ecological balance

Add theoretical aspects in a new paragraph (2. Theoretical framework) that allow the results of each phases to be discussed with other previous investigations.

 

4. 5. Discussion

The literature review is too modest to work out a research gap and to discuss the results of your study in relation to findings of previous studies in the field.

 

6. Conclusions and Political Implications

I suggest to insert this paragraph that should include not only recommendations for further research, for policy makers, but also the study’s limitations

.

 

Tables

Finally, the quality of Figure 1 and tables must be improved

 

Source

Authors’ elaboration of data from farms holding files?

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately, most suggestions are not corrected. The changes were not made correctly. The paper still doesn’t correspond to high standards of Sustainability.

 

Methodology, results, and scientific contributions are not acceptable. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we are sorry that you are still unsatisfied with our paper. We have changed the paper accordingly with the other 4 reviewers comments that were more specific than yours. They are now satisfied with the paper. Probably, as far as we can imagine, your disappointment is due to the methodological approach, but we cannot change that. Thank you anyway for the time you spent reviewing our paper. Kind regards.

Reviewer 2 Report

Remove typo mistakes.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,  we revised the typo mistakes. Thank you for helping us improving our paper.  Kind regards.

Reviewer 3 Report

Lots of revisions have been performed in the manuscript. Most of them are roughly satisfactory. I think this manuscript could be acceptable for publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for helping us improving our paper.  Kind regards.  

Reviewer 5 Report

None

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for helping us improving our paper.  Kind regards.